We’ve been updating the family website. I’ve been updating my blog. I have been doing–so many things.

Instead of working big lately, I have been working small. Not too small, because I can’t handle too much too small. Even the way that I have been working lately…the writing, the artwork…everything is different–even if it looks the same from the outside.

It’s funny to me, as I look around and ponder the changes that are currently underway and the ones I know are in the works. The destination has never wavered; the paths I take to get there, they change; they twist and turn and loop back over roads already taken, and still, I walk through uncharted territory. This dark forest through which I walk this moment of my life — it may be new — it may be uncharted — but this has a feeling of comfort and safety the likes of which I have not known since early childhood…if not before …

The reason this post began today is : with no thought whatsoever other than my intuition, I closed my online stores today. The ones where you could buy prints, or bags, or pillows, or phone covers, or whatever….I let them go. Why? Last night as I drifted off to sleep, I had that voice in my head tell me, there’s no need for these things–let them go. I sort of snorted at the voice, rolled over and fought myself to sleep.

How can I let these things go? My brain never stops…and when I say I fight myself to sleep some nights, it’s true. My brain sometimes needs to be wrestled with and tamed into an uneasy submission so that my body can rest as best as it can. (Yoga nidra is an amazingly helpful tool that I use for this.)

How can I let these things go? Online stores that make prints and all the other things, this is what artists need to have, so they can get their name out, so they can get their work out into as many hands as possible.

No. It isn’t.

Online stores require time, effort, maintenance…I have to routinely go through and add more, delete some, keep up with changes in technology and usage. This takes time. It takes energy, on many levels. I have neither copious amounts of time nor energy to do this, even when I have my to do list and check-lists penciled into my planner so I remember to do them on a semi-regular basis.

Some days, I barely have the energy or desire to log in to check my email. If it weren’t for my family, I might skip doing that more often than I do.

When I look at the online stores from this angle, it’s a no-brainer to delete the accounts and remove all trace of them from my blog and the website.

So, if you are looking for the links to the online stores, the ones I hadn’t really put too much into as yet in the first place, well, they no longer exist. I won’t apologize for that.

I can see where things are shifting and changing. I am ok of letting go of print-on-demand services for my artwork.

Know that other things are in the works, even if it may take awhile for us to get there.

One thing I do want to say is instead of trying to “keep up with all the other artists out there” by having the online shops, my focus will be geared more towards selling original artwork, my own and that of my family–although I am still working on getting prints of Nikolas’s work made at some point.

However, it is summertime. That means there is a need for more away from the computer time. And that is a welcome shift for me as well. Not all that long ago, it hit me, as it does from time to time as I am prone to forget, that I need to get away from trying so hard online, to sell, to network, to market, and I need to be where I am–not some ghost online flitting here and there all the time. I need to pull back–and paint. I need to pull back and snuggle for hours trapped on the couch with my toddler watching Big Hero 6 again (and again and again and again). I need to be present to and in this house. And I need to shine my sink myself, because it is seriously lost on the 15 year old, despite the fact that she has been hearing this and seeing it put into practice since she was about 4 or 5 years old.

I’m still here. More projects are coming. A lot a lot is going on off-line. One day, some of it will be revealed, whenever it comes time to reveal such things.